Traditionally, managing business finances and accounting has been a largely manual endeavor. In recent years, however, more and more organizations such as small businesses have begun to use software tools for finance management and accounting. Such tools are relatively inexpensive, typically run on relatively affordable computer systems, and provide intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces that do not require extensive software or financial expertise. The tools help to simplify and automate a variety of finance-related tasks, such as managing payrolls, sales and expenses, and paying bills. One of the key factors in the increasing popularity of such tools is their ease of use for the typical small business owner, who is able to perform the majority of finance management tasks using the tools with a minimum of training. Professionally trained accountants and/or other experts may of course still be retained by the small business owner to help with specific complex tasks, such as certain types of audits, preparation of tax returns, or when financial information of the small business is to be released externally, e.g., to investors, partners, or government agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C) in the United States. To perform the requested tasks, the professional accountants may also use interfaces provided by the software tools to access financial transaction records created and/or modified by the small business owners.
Unfortunately, in some cases, the requirements of traditional professional accounting techniques may potentially conflict with the desires of the vendors of software accounting tools to maximize the ease of use and flexibility of the tools for small business owners. For example, in traditional accounting, once the “books are closed” on a set of accounts of an organization (e.g., after financial data corresponding to a “closed” accounting period is released or published in some form outside the organization), transactions that correspond to the closed accounting period typically cannot be modified. In one exemplary scenario, if the last accounting period for a small business is closed on Dec. 31, 2005, and on Jan. 10, 2006, a mistake is discovered in an amount specified in a transaction of Dec. 20, 2005, traditional accounting techniques may require that the mistake can only be compensated or corrected by creating a separate transaction. For example, if the amount were incorrectly recorded as $200, when it should have been $250, a separate transaction with specifying the $50 difference may have to be recorded. However, such a requirement for a separate transaction may sometimes be confusing and/or difficult for small business owners. In addition, requiring such separate transactions for correcting errors may make it harder for the small business owners to understand or interpret any given transaction, since it may require some effort to find correcting transactions (if any exist) linked to the given transaction. At the same time, vendors of accounting tools may wish to ensure that experts who have to manage the accounting/legal impact of transaction changes do not face an undue burden in identifying changed transactions and taking any necessary actions, such as republishing a financial statement after a significant change to one or more transactions reflected in the financial statement is detected.